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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Necessary Roughness

This is the usual college football comedy with the usual team of misfits (in this case led by an overage quarterback played by Scott Bakula and a female placekicker played by Kathy Ireland) going up against overwhelming odds and triumphing. But it's fairly funny, with a good supporting cast including Hector Elizondo and Robert Loggia as the coaches. The real reason I like it, though, is because it was filmed mostly on the campus of North Texas State University only a few years after I graduated from there, so as I watched it could say "I recognize that building" and "I walked along that sidewalk to class every day". On top of that, the farm scenes (Bakula's character is a farmer before he goes back to school) were filmed out in the country not far from where we live, so I recognized those settings, too. Clearly, it doesn't take much to entertain me.

7 comments:

I, too, enjoy the movie precisely because I can recognize the buildings on the campus of the University of North Texas (as it was known when I was there for graduate school). Plus, it has Jason Bateman in it during his "middle period" before Arrested Development so that's not a bad thing. Charming film, and I usually watch it whenever it's on TV.

We were at a conference in Denton while the movie was being filmed, and the actors were staying in our hotel. As Judy likes to say, she breathed on Robert Loggia. We also mingled with Hector Elizondo and listened in when Jason Bateman's minion called a club to try to assure that Bateman would be lionized if he happened to drop by. It was pretty funny because the guy the minion was talking to obviously had no clue as to who Jason Bateman was.

My brushes with movie star fame include seeing Steve McQueen's back when they were filming THE GETAWAY in San Marcos and mistaking Peter Ustinov for a homeless guy when they were shooting some of LOGAN'S RUN in Fort Worth. And I worked in a video store with a guy who was an extra in BONNIE AND CLYDE.